Anybody here fly drones?

[CageyH]

A friend came round to my place at the weekend, and gave me a demo of his DJI Mavic Pro Platinum. It is an impressive piece of kit, and gives pretty sharp images from the 4K camera installed.

I used to fly RC helicopters, and this looks like fun. My only issue is what is the longevity like on these drones? It does not seem like the type of thing that you could use a lot.

I was just wondering if anybody has gone down this route, and how long it was before the drone was gathering dust.

[dave2010]

I have a small one, which I assume is a toy, but it might work. At one time I thought I'd use a drone to fly over our house, and check for problems. I know one other person who has one - or someone in his family has - and he used it to take photographs of his house and garden from the air. I'm not sure how easy these things are to fly - whether it's best to start practising in a very open field, or what. Here we have trees, so negotiating round those might present problems.

I have done some mad things in the past, but I'd be wary of playing with drones unless reasonable safeguards taken. I once flew a kite, together with a bucket of sand on a beach - I won't elaborate more. Nothing went wrong, but with hindsight it was probably stupid - and it was a long time ago.

[Barry]

I have a small one, which I assume is a toy, but it might work. At one time I thought I'd use a drone to fly over our house, and check for problems. I know one other person who has one - or someone in his family has - and he used it to take photographs of his house and garden from the air. I'm not sure how easy these things are to fly - whether it's best to start practising in a very open field, or what. Here we have trees, so negotiating round those might present problems.

I have done some mad things in the past, but I'd be wary of playing with drones unless reasonable safeguards taken. I once flew a kite, together with a bucket of sand on a beach - I won't elaborate more. Nothing went wrong, but with hindsight it was probably stupid - and it was a long time ago.

Aw go on - do tell.

[dave2010]

Aw go on - do tell.

Not a lot to tell really .... But if the bucket had come down it might have hit someone .... or done some other damage. It wasn't a completely empty beach or completely empty location. Nuff said. It seemed very stable at the time - it was a surprisingly good kite. I wouldn't do that now - probably!